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FOLK-POETRY IN THE MAKING by Fred Johnston

(Poetry Ireland News, January/February 2003)

In the course of my work, I have been in a position to collate as well
as encourage the writing of ordinary, modest people, none of whom had pretensions
towards literary fame. Through small writers' groups, as well as writers'
projects organised in schools, I have been brought into contact with a vibrant
and acutely aware living poetry, unaffected by the grab for recognition
which has, alas, become a hallmark of so many 'literary' poets. Yet this
enormous body of work goes unnoticed by contemporary literary critics and
anthologists.

The essential role of poetry was to record and historicize the psychic
life of the tribe. As a mode of recording, of rending into written or oral
history ordinary community events that had achieved a certain mythic status,
this role has continued. But it has slipped underground; rather, it has
been pushed underground. And the loss of this poetry to a wider audience
is distressing.

There has been a rise in recent years of the local published history. Particularly
in rural communities, individuals have stepped forward to write small histories,
to document in a modest, but not insignificant way, the life and times of
the place in which they and their families have lived for generations. Name-places,
habitations, industries, personalities, customs, often in a broth of facts
and a showering of figures - nonetheless the histories are printed, made
available to a wider audience. The folk traditions are made into print,
and passed out of the parish for possible inspection in a wider world.

It is not unknown for such publications to carry the words of a song composed
in honour of a place or event by a local man or woman. Perhaps nothing else
fell from their pen. This is folk-poetry in the making, the origin of our
folk songs, ballads, the blood of tradition.

Yet, for critics and anthologists of a more academic stamp - a clinical,
tradition-less school - these modest poetic efforts count for nothing. It
is doubtful whether they are considered at all. When was the last time you
read the lyrics of a satire by, say, Tim Lyons? Who, you say? Yet I have
seen Tim stun and silence an entire public house audience on a weekend night
by an unaccompanied rendition of a satire. Can his importance be argued
against?

I have listened in rural school rooms as shy and genteel elderly ladies
recited poems they had written in the Irish language as well as English.
Lovely poems, celebrated in a traditional rhyme and metre, rooted still
in song and music and mnemonic. None of these poems, I would argue, would
ever grace the pages of one of our small literary magazines. Certainly you
wouldn't find them in The Irish Times. Nor will they appear in the 'New
Irish Writing' page of The Sunday Tribune. In any case, so unassuming are
their authors that the notion that anyone else might wish to bring wider
recognition in their work would astound them.

Instead, we are content with a poetry occasionally deemed, ludicrously
and without definition, as 'meaningful,' and 'important', poetry which carries
little or no lyrical substance, is hardly touched by the Muse, is more often
chopped lines of prose. Our critics, keeping the head well down and being
good boys, never demand that the emperor look into a mirror.

A huge divorce has occurred between one poetry and another; between the
poetry of drawing rooms, festivals, anthologies, awards, and the poetry
of the everyday lived experience of ordinary people, for which there are
complex socio-historic reasons. This is not to confer automatic legitimacy
on the consequences of this divorce, nor to provide an easy excuse for the
relegation of folk-poetry.

And the importance of the latter poetry of community is immense. Tradition
and folk-memory are retrieved and maintained within its working. The soul
of community, of historic belonging, is maintained in a way that many more
'professional' poets would envy and, indeed, may often strive for. No less
than traditional music played in its home-place, folk- or community-poetry
- either term is reasonable - stirs the vital essence of a communal unity
by being born out of that community and offering itself back into it.

In my view, it is the duty of those poets who are sent to teach or instruct
to encourage and develop this poetry, because such poetry will survive in
folk-memory when the glossy anthologies and glittering prizes are dust and
rust.

The essential reason for its survival is that it is born out of the community
to which it refers; it becomes, with ease, as much part of the life of that
community as the local postman. It is passed on through a robust and millennia-old
oral tradition of acquired casual learning - as poetry was before the arrival
of print type. In this sense, and immediately, this poetry can be said to have
its importance, as well as its relevance. Individuals become associated directly
with a piece of spoken or sung poetry in a way that many of us who dwell in
the world of the book-publication would envy.
I've clanged the note of distance here; the poetry of community, folk-poetry
is too often them, while the 'real' poetry (that which means nothing to community
but a lot to the individual, often the same individual who wrote it) is us.
This is very unfortunate and, ultimately, works to the detriment of all poetry.

It seems to me that a major reassessment of folk-poetry is long overdue;
intelligent poets of whatever stamp will understand the importance of this.
Those who ignore it will continue, in my view, to create a poetry of squeaking,
rather than speaking.

More often, a poetry which does not, cannot sing, because community is
poetry's voice.